Burnt Offerings
by labellavita688
Summary: AU. War changes everything, and its survivors are no exception. Voldemort is gone, but so is Ron, and with him everything Hermione had never even contemplated losing. Now she must try to sort out how to get from one day to the next on her own, the Trio now a relic of another life. But she is far from the only one facing an uncertain future...


_No_.

A scream was building, clawing its way up from some monstrous black pit in Hermione's chest, but her throat was suddenly too tight to permit sound. There was a dim awareness of the rain, pinpricks of ice, running together to creep over her head, her face, the exposed skin at her hands and wrists and ankles, but the chill had ceased to register. Because there, lying in a lifeless arc at her feet, like a broken string curling from the neck of a violin, was Ron Weasley.

His hair, that burnt sunset red, grown long enough to brush his collar in the past few months, was riddled with streaks of mud: the blacks and greens and browns of ruined flesh. His skin was milk-white, each freckle stark as a drop of ink, the color gone from his lips and cheeks; it was a mercy that his eyelids had drifted shut as he went, as Hermione thought she might've gone truly mad if she'd had to see those warm brown eyes extinguished, turned to so much dark glass.

She felt the stinging, uneven pressure of pebbles beneath her knees, and Ron's vacant face loomed suddenly closer; she'd sunk to the ground without so much as noticing. She extended a trembling finger and trailed it along the curve of his cheek, so slowly that she felt as though she were moving through water. The filth that clung to her, the ubiquitous creeping mold of battle, rubbed off where she touched his skin; the sight of the smear of dirt on the icy plane of his face made her recoil, snatching back her hand and suddenly fighting the dizzy, sweating urge to vomit. Despite the flecks of stubble trailing along his jaw, he was so young-looking in his unearthly stillness; she could still see the soft blue threads of his veins in his neck, half expecting them to throb with his pulse as she watched.

Her eyes dragged down along his abdomen, absorbing the sight of him in a transfixed sort of horror. He was in the well-worn Cannons shirt she'd bought him, the one he'd ripped at the shoulder and stubbornly kept on wearing all these weeks; if she'd offered to mend it once, she'd offered a thousand times. Her vision swam, and all the dead and disparate parts of Ron blurred into a pool of faded orange before her. She thought wildly that maybe if he had been wearing black instead, he might have been spared; maybe his killer hadn't known who he was, hadn't mowed him down in pursuit of the Boy Who Lived, had only glimpsed the foolish brightness of his clothing through the knotted trees... The thought made her feel agonizingly as though she were about to fly apart into uncountable pieces, only the damp veil of her skin holding her together.

In some more orderly, logical portion of her brain, she heard a sudden voice that sounded strangely like Harry, begging her to move. She couldn't linger here, not when Snatchers and Death Eaters still filled the forest with screams and reckless laughter and flashes of colored light. It wasn't until she felt large hands latching onto her right arm and tugging, their owner groaning and breathlessly yanking her to her feet, that she realized it really _was_ Harry.

"You can't – we can't help him, Hermione," he choked out, clutching her with such desperation that even through her clothes, she felt every one of his fingernails digging into her rain-deadened skin. "We've got to move." His words were scarcely distinguishable from sobs.

He was right, of course, and with that same sense of automatic, unthinking movement she was walking again, trying not to breathe through her mouth, sickened by the taste of wet, decaying soil on the night air. Numbly she watched as a cluster of trees to her left blossomed with green light, a sharp, unnatural rushing sound audible even in the din of battle. She hadn't even heard the incantation, it might've been whispered as delicately as an endearment, but now someone else was dead, too. Someone else was lying, unseen, in the muck, just like Ron. Her heart struggled to beat through the fresh surge of fear, thudding unevenly in her chest.

_We've got to find Ginny_, she tried to say then, her mouth thick and dry and incapable of speech. But Harry was clearly thinking the same thing; she could hear him muttering the other girl's name, over and over like some anguished prayer, tears making his voice sound swollen and strange.

He continued dragging Hermione by the arm, his grip like steel cord above her elbow, and it was tightening. She tried to tell him that he was hurting her, that her fingers were beginning to tingle and prickle with lack of blood flow, but her throat clamped down on the words. His hand was becoming oddly hot, almost feverish, just this side of painful even through her sleeve. She glanced down at her arm in senseless panic, but it was not Harry's hand that held fast to her.

A thick-bodied snake, black scales gleaming greenish like enameled steel, was wrapped around her from wrist to shoulder, tightening more and more with each second that passed. She watched muscles ripple beneath its skin as the coils shifted, closing together, winding round and round. Frantic, she began to tear at it, fingernails gaining no purchase as they raked across the hard, dry scales, and glancing around wildly for Harry. He was gone, and the trees felt so much closer to her now, black pikes stabbing up through wells of pale, sickly moonlight. The serpent wound around her tighter still.

Her mind narrowed down to the single, consuming thought that this was pain beyond pain, the snake was going to tear her arm off at the socket, and the scream she'd been fighting since she'd found Ron's corpse finally won, bursting from her like a geyser of blood, searing her throat on its way out, and then everything went colorless and cold.

Hermione was thrown back into consciousness with the scream still ripping its way out of her mouth. Her eyes flew open, hand shooting out to grab her wand off of her bedside table, the practiced motion fluid even in the confusion and semi-dark of very early morning.

"Lumos," she gasped out, surrounding herself instantly with a pool of warm, golden light. She was not in the Forbidden Forest, of course; her mind knew this, but her body would take a moment to catch up. Her heart hammered and strained against the confines of her chest, her own pulse filling her throat. She reached up with a shaking hand and pushed back the curtain of damp curls that had plastered itself to the side of her face. Her sweat was running in curling lines down her body, at the nape of her neck, through the hollow between her breasts and along her spine, like tiny rivers of ice. She swiped away a cold tingle just below her collarbone, and huffed out a long breath.

She made the usual circuit with her lit wand, passing it slowly in a broad arc around her, letting the comfort of the light flush out the shadows and uncertainty from the corners of her rented room. One of the Leaky Cauldron's cheapest, it was so small that she could do this while still seated in the middle of her bed. Finishing her survey, such as it was, she let out another slow breath and lowered herself back against her pillow, cringing as her skin met the soaking cloth.

The nightmare was a familiar one, though she had to admit the snake was new. Sometimes the dream meandered through the smoking ruins of Hogwarts until she and Harry found Ginny collapsed in the Entrance Hall, bloodied and with a broken leg, but alive. Other nights she would barely catch a glimpse of Ron's paper-white face before her mind would eject her, and she would vault awake, shuddering and sitting upright, eyes streaming, wand already in hand. And then, the worst of all of them: things would play out all the way through to the end, through the blood and the rubble and the destruction of Voldemort, but it would be Mrs. Weasley's broken, hysterical sobs that would echo in Hermione's head for her entire waking day. Always a bit different, but, really, always the same.

Her breathing was finally within her control again, and she forced herself to inhale and exhale slowly, deliberately, as she began her nightly count. The ceiling tiles above her bed were made of an ivory stone, veined in gold, that must once have been beautiful; now they were all chipped in the corners, stained yellow and orange in irregular blotches that suggested potions gone wrong, or insects smashed with the head of a broom. There were fifty-two such tiles comprising the ceiling of her room; despite knowing this for certain, having spent two months' worth of nights scanning the space above her bed, it was oddly calming, a sort of ritual now, for her to count them all. By the time she would reach the thirties, her pulse would have retreated back to its usual rhythm, the sweat would be drying on her skin, and the nightmare would have receded into the dark spaces behind her thoughts, leaving her a few hours of dreamless peace before dawn.

Tonight, though, she could still feel thick sinews slithering in rings around her arm, clinging to her with bruising force. She rubbed her bicep, willing away the sensation, nearly aching despite her unmarked flesh. Focusing on her ritual, she made it all the way to fifty-two and again to seventeen before she finally felt her muscles relaxing, the snake relinquishing its grip. _That_, at least, had been nothing but a dream.


End file.
